


Ambush

by NevillesGran



Series: Library Assistants [1]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Leitners
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-06
Updated: 2019-09-06
Packaged: 2020-10-11 01:01:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20537594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NevillesGran/pseuds/NevillesGran
Summary: Jon, Gerry, and Melanie encounter trouble. In fairness, there's really no such thing as a "simple" retrieval job when you're picking up new acquisitions for the Leitner Library.





	Ambush

**Author's Note:**

> AU in which Leitner's library survived the massive attack in the late 90s, and his mastery of the books has only improved since then. Leitner himself rarely leaves the premises anymore - it still needs guarding, and a LOT of people want very much to kill him, personally - but he sends his assistants out periodically. Three in particular form the Acquisitions Team...

The book fell open at a touch to Jon’s most-used page, and he didn’t need to read the words to know them, but he did need to read them to know other things, useful things. _ The true art of understanding lies in awareness—of one’s surroundings, of others, of one’s self. _

“They’re Flesh,” he said. Practice made it easy, speaking without thought what knowledge came to mind while he read the words. “The scribes in Alexandria called them homunculi, but a more modern medical term—”

“Don’t need to know what they _ are_, Jon,” Melanie snapped, as she just barely sidestepped a claw and sliced it off to the rhythm of her blade. “Just need to know how to kill them!”

“Or how to get out of here,” said Gerry, and bashed in a homunculi’s...not-quite skull with a crowbar.

_Thus did the hunters of the Paleolithic track their prey, the scholars of the Dark Ages derive the logic of God, the modern miracle-workers such as Salk and Oppenheimer_— “Back door thirty paces to the left and down the stairs. This was a trap.” —_yes, I name a creator of death as well as life. All are miracles, are they not? Pure understanding is the quest; the ethical codes of different ages are simply a guide. Where would we be without the cruel experimentation_—

Gerry grabbed him by the scruff of his shirt and started towing him down the hall, Melanie keeping up the rear guard. “Dark, Jon!”

“Right, right.” Jon tore his eyes away from _ The Art of Awareness _ and unholstered a 17th century poet’s accounts of her dreams for a year. This was bookmarked to the right page—not his favorite, not by a long shot, but useful. _ And so the Darkness over me / Rose as a sun that was / Not there, nor ne’er again should be... _

Melanie grabbed his coat as the lights disappeared around them. There was a crash that was hopefully the Flesh things falling over each other in the dark. Jon couldn’t see anything except the page in front of him (he really didn't like the Dark.) But Gerry kept moving with confidence, because Gerry was beyond the End and so not generally affected by anything he didn’t want to be.

Thirty minutes, two more near misses on Melanie’s part and one that left a bloody furrow down Gerry’s leg, and a hasty concealing pamphlet of the Forsaken later, they had a train compartment to themselves on the way back to Oslo and the Library.

“I’m glad our supernatural knowledge could tell us it was a _ trap_,” Melanie said as she cleaned Gerry’s leg. “I might not have known otherwise.”


End file.
